From the Book, Reform of Renewal - By Fr. Benedict Groeschel C.F.R

Personal Reform: The Place to Start
In his History of the Popes, Ludwig Pastor credits a Genovese laywoman, Catherine Adorno (Saint Catherine of Genoa), with beginning the effective reform of the Church on the eve of the Reformation.(3) She lived in the worst of spiritual times. The attempted reform of the Church at the Fourth Lateran Council failed because bishops did not take seriously the call for reform and were embroiled in their own corruption and confusion. Although there were good Christians everywhere in the hierarchy, clergy and laity, there were so much ignorance, scandal and materialism that few seriously heeded the call to reform.

Catherine began a movement of personal individual reform called the Oratory of Divine Love. It was basically no more than a series of prayer groups, in which individuals strove to lead a good Christian life guided by the Scriptures and the lives of the saints and motivated to do works of charity. Catherine herself was director of a huge hospital for the poor. She died in 1511. Martin Luther was actually one of the many people who felt her influence and was struggling to work for the reform of the Church at that time. Catherine's work was not in vain, even though the split in Christianity came, because she began the Catholic Reformation and even influenced the piety of Protestantism.(4)

Catherine's deep conviction was that reform had to begin with the individual. She lived in a time when the reform of the Church itself was needed. Not only were her prayer groups, or oratories, as they were called, very popular, but also her movement affected in one way or another almost every major Catholic reformer after her death. The great reformers of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century all assumed that her basic principle was correct, namely, that reform had to begin with the individual. They all agreed that reform must be founded on prayer and expressed by charity to one's neighbor, especially the poor, and by love of God. All the Catholic reformers insisted on a deep personal piety, which psychologically galvanized all the potentials of the individual into action: intelligence, memory, will, emotion and even the intuitive powers.

Where Does the Individual Begin?

Clare of Assisi and Catherine of Genoa scarcely ever left their hometowns, and when they did, they stayed in the immediate neighborhood. They began where they were. Clare was led by Christ through Francis, and Catherine claimed to be led only by the Holy Spirit. They began their reforms right where they were, and they began with repentance and continued on with constant self-examination and reliance on God. Like the modern members of Alcoholics Anonymous, they acknowledged their powerlessness to do anything without help from above. They confessed that they were poor sinners, worked for others and made amends for what they believed were their faults. As we mentioned in Chapter Two, the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (see Appendix One) are classic descriptions of any truly Christian conversion, including the conversion of these two great women saints.

Clare's poverty and Catherine's total dedication to the divine will are both reflections of the absolutism of repentance. Each speaks of the total desire to do God's will as it is known and to accept the vicissitudes of life as His permissive will. Both of these attitudes are reflected in the famous Serenity Prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous:

Prayer for Serenity

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

The absolutism of conversion — something that in itself goes against the grain of contemporary selfism — is perhaps best expressed in the total acceptance of God's will, which is the very heart of the poverty of Francis and Clare and the motivating force of the divine love of Catherine of Genoa.

Along with seeking personal reform in the various departments of life that we have outlined in the previous chapters, the individual must be willing to work to accept the divine will in all its mysteries. This is the key to true reform.


Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. "Reform in the Church and in Society." In The Reform of Renewal (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 185-199.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR  the founder of the Trinity  Retreat Center, for prayer and study for the clergy. He holds a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University. He is one of the founding members of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal which is dedicated to preaching, reform and providing care for the homeless in the South Bronx, Harlem, London and Honduras. He is the author of a large number of books and tapes, including The King Crucified and Risen: Meditations on the Passion and Glory of Christ; Arise from Darkness; From Scandal to Hope (2002); The Cross at Ground Zero (2001); Praying in the Presence of the Lord with the Saints (2001); The Journey Toward God (2000); In the Presence of Our Lord: The History, Thought and Psychology of Eucharistic Devotion (1996); A Still Small Voice: A Practical Guide on Reported Revelations (1993); and The Reform of Revewal